Development of Exclusive Seismic Fragility Curves for Critical Infrastructure: An Oil Pumping Station Case Study

Abstract

Fragility curves are a common tool to appraise the expected damage to critical infrastructure (CI) after an earthquake event. Previous studies offer fragility curve parameters for CI that are suitable for a vast range of systems, without an in-depth examination of the system architecture and subcomponents. These curves are applicable in cases where a thorough analysis is not required or when the information related to a single system is poor. This paper proposes an original approach and presents a comprehensive methodology for developing exclusive fragility curves for critical infrastructure systems. In the proposed methodology, the fragility curves are developed by a decomposition of the system into its main subcomponents and determination of the failure mechanisms. The derivation of the fragility parameters includes failure analysis for each damage state by a Fault Tree Analysis and approximation of the fragility parameters in accordance with the rate of exceedance. The implementation of the methodology is demonstrated by a case study with three alternatives of an oil pumping plant configuration. It was found that a change of a subcomponent has an effect on the derived values of the fragility parameters. Moreover, the variances in the fragility parameters have implications for the effectiveness of each alternative to resist different levels of severity.